Now raise your hands up up
And hear the tones go higher
Now drop your hands down down
And hear the tones go lower
Then listen to your body most carefully
It’s a natural little scale
Which your striding gait can play
Where the legs will mark the meter
And the arms will play the tune
It’s a changing moving music
Which will make the body sway
It’s the Dao Re Mi
That sets you on the way
On the way on the way on the way

What I describe here is an association of the senses that might be
synesthesia, pseudo-synesthesia, or conscious dreaming. I have not received an
unambiguous diagnosis from experts in the field. Until I do, I will assume that
it is a form of pseudo-synesthesia or conscious dreaming that can be learned,
unlike hard-wired synesthesia that is physiological and inherited.

When I wrote Rhythm Vision in 1986, I assumed that I
had produced a work of phenomenological imagination and not a record of a
synesthesia. I called it a form of soft-wired synesthesia to distinguish it
from the hard/cross-wired types I had read about. I assumed I did not have any
“true” synesthesia and I did not expect to get one.

Over the last
several years, I have meditated Buddhist-style in Lotus position, but in early
2003, I decided to experiment with just sitting in a chair and staying
physically quiet in a variety of positions. Usually one arm would be resting on
a table and the other on a leg. They would not be uncomfortable but there would
be a little tension, unlike the very loose feeling in a Lotus position. As a
result, I became more conscious of my arms and their neural energy. (Daoists
would call it “chi”.) After a couple of months of doing that every morning, I
decided to try it to music as played on one of our local classical music
stations. Doing that had a strong effect on me. Sitting perfectly still in
various postures (while maintaining intermittent awareness of that stillness)
was for me like charging a battery. Movement can dissipate neural energy but
stillness, at least for me, can gather it. So I had some very nice experiences.

One morning an inner voice “told” me to raise my arms, and, as I did so (“Venus” from Gustav
Holst’s “The Planets” was being played), I had the most intense musical
experience of my life. A few days before, I had been walking down the street
when I started playing around with my arm positions. I found that if I turned
my hands with palms forward, I seemed to be “hearing” a slightly higher
kinesthetic body tone and if I turned my hands backward, I got a lower tone –
three tones in all or even a few more if I tried to rotate my hands even
further. This interested me but the word “synesthesia” did not cross my mind,
perhaps because it was so subtle and unlike anything I had read about that
phenomenon. I asked a few friends at work to try the palm rotation, but they
either blew me off or didn’t get anything. A few days after hearing “Venus”, I
decided while walking to raise my arms up my body (palms down parallel to the
ground) as I had done while listening to the Holst selection. I noticed a
subtle but evident rising kinesthetic tone and then when I lowered them I got a
descending tone. I broke it down and found I got a musical scale. Starting
about 2” below my navel was do, re at the level of the navel, mi another 2” up,
fa a little up the ribs, so at the nipple level, la at the base of the
clavicle, ti at the base of the nose, and the octave at the top of the
eyebrows. Then I realized “Wow! I can make music with hand movements and I
don’t have to hum in my mind,” which had been my practice with rhythm vision. I
later extended the scale both above and below and found that going out sideways
with my arms produced the same effect. I could also get other scales by just
starting at different points on or out from my body and going up or down. They
all seem to be “major” but I can make “minor” sounds if I am conscious about
making smaller hand movements when a “half-step” is called for. There don’t
seem to be any difference in the scales – basically one generic scale with no
overtone series and “circle of fifths.” I soon found that I could have a lot of
fun moving hands, fingers, and fists, and, in the process, becoming a kind of
kinesthetic one-man band and rhythm section. I have always loved to walk but
this was an octave jump up for me – not only is it a great exercise because the
whole body is engaged and can be moved in different directions but because
after awhile my body slows down pleasantly and I go into a natural meditative
walk. Over the next several weeks I observed and worked on how the arms, legs,
and body interact to produce different rhythms and sounds. Head and shoulder
movements also produce tones. Hands and fingers can be moved in arcing,
curving, figural and geometric ways. The arms can be used to “entrain” the legs
and mind to hear or not hear certain sounds or to walk with different accents
and meters.

After discovering this “hand jive”, I assumed it was biomechanical in origin – that there is
something about the raising and extending of the arms that lessened tension on
the spine and thus raised the “tones”, but after coming up empty when I had
other people try to duplicate it, I began to doubt that explanation. I dropped
it completely when I found that I got the tones while sitting. (They are even
softer and subtler because the walking body seems to provide a more percussive
resonance chamber.) So I had to conclude that it was some kind of synthesis of
the senses, but what kind was it that I didn’t notice for decades and required
meditation to bring above the liminal barrier into conscious awareness? I do
believe, however, that muscle contractions and relaxations are involved in
measuring movements that the brain translates into kinesthetic sounds.

Later I also found out that I automatically correlate tones with distance (lower closer, higher
going away) and with amount of light (low in darkness and shadow, higher with
the increasing of the light). I can walk along and point or look at trees and
other objects and hear musical tones. I can point several fingers and get
chord-like sounds – not as distinct as the real thing but still interesting and
fun. Most strangely of all, I can pick up sticks, twigs, and branches in the
woods and point them at trees and change the kinesthetic tones in predictable,
almost Pythagorean ways. For instance, if a tree is about 25’ away, it will be
an octave higher than my basic “fundamental” body tone of A below middle C.
However, if I point a six-foot branch at it (weight plays no role), the octave
is canceled. If I use a four-foot branch, I drop the tone about a “fifth”, etc.
And, as described in Rhythm Vision,
when objects visually “rub” against each other while I’m in motion, they
produce onomatopoetic tactile sound based on their shape and textures. All the
things I have described are automatic, except that with the stick pointing I
can get confused if I go too fast. I then have to stop and restore the
“natural” order. This is perhaps an indication that mine is not a “pure”
synesthesia.

After making these discoveries about myself, I have wondered whether this was always latent and
just below awareness in me or whether there could be a type of synesthesia that
is developed over time. Brain “plasticity” is now a common term among
neuro-scientists and this may be an example. Whatever it is, it is a most
welcome gift – I call it the Dao Re Mi for musical walking has always been my
“way” – in these autumnal years of my life.

Copyright 2003 by Dennis Roth - Please do not distribute without the
author's permission.